Good morning.
That's the lamp in front of my eyes as I write every day. It's an ordinary brown paper lampshade with the lovely addition (not skillfully done, I know) of some ferns and so forth that I collected one fall in upper New York State.
I have lots of leaves. The best way to keep them is to get a magazine and stuff them in each page, one perfect leaf per page. That way they don't fade and they are kept handy for future perusal.
That lampshade was pretty nice looking until dust permeated the glue of the transparent tape that I used to plaster the ferns on there. I still love it. When the lamp is turned on you can see all the tiny leaves and stems of the ferns, and the baby maple leaves---and that gives me pleasure, to look at them. If you are smart, you disregard the dust.
I was reading some blogs from this time last year and marveling at how simple and straightforward our lives were then. We were planning on going to Iowa for Miranda's graduation. There was no real question about it, we were going. Then on Apr. 30, Theo fell and struck his head, a passing and not catastrophic incident, and yet everything changed for us then. Our life is different now. This is what you get for being old.
Then I was cooking, now we get the Meals on Wheels. They are strange but edible. It is still a pleasure to have them arrive, but sometimes it is a challenge to love them. Yesterday we got cannolini (pasta, ricotta, tomato sauce) plus short-cooked string beans and short-cooked carrots with peas.
As my father used to say, "No rare vegetables, please!" Sometimes I feel that the MOW way overcooks the vegetables but then comes a day like yesterday and I miss the good overcooked green beans that I love.
Did I mention that we are having the kitchen hauled out and put in new? I guess it is a good time for it...now or never. There 'll be no cooking at all then, for a while.YAZZYBEL
There is a vocabulary--perhaps many vocabularies--particular to old age.
Two words that have come into mine are, "maundering," and "irksome."
"WHY are you maundering around all over the place?" said I one night, as my aged husband maundered about the house in the dark.
And I wondered, "Where did that word come from, anyway?" It certainly was not in my vocabulary before. And yet--it was the very word to describe his perigrinations, pointless and non-goal-oriented as they were.
I even looked it up in the dictionary. It is something like wandering, without the intent of the journey. A very apt word for the journeys of the elderly (I thought.)
And there's the word, "irked." And, "irksome." My mother was often irked, but I never in my life was irked at all--until lately. Now I am irked all the time. I find many things irksome: junk mail, the gaggle of scarecrows running for president under the flag of a Party which shall be nameless, the fact that I don't have a dishwasher or a proper oven. Irked I am, and irked I may remain.
We are contracting for a remodeled kitchen. As soon as it gets nice, we'll doubtless sell the house before I have a chance to get the kitchen all grimy. And that will be the most irksome thing of all. YAZZYBEL
What's the best cake?
Chocolate--coconut--daffodil (the name alone conjures up rhapsodies)--angel food--sponge--!
We could and can go on and on.
But here's my idea of the best cake at this time in my life, when my cake genes have been honed, have been forged in the fire--and they KNOW what's good. This cake comes in many versions, sometimes plain, sometimes with nuts, sometimes with fruits.
Here it is, from George Lang's The Cuisine of Hungary. It is the cake his mother made. It is real. It is the best. If you want any other cake, you really want the frosting. If you want cake, eat this one:
My Mother's Cherry Cake
1 lb pitted sweet cherries
1 1/2 sticks sweet butter
3/4 c. granulated sugar
3 eggs, separated
Mix the butter with half the sugar, and gradually add the three egg yolks, beating well. Add one cup of flour.
Beat the egg whites with the rest of the sugar till stiff. Fold into egg yolk batter.
Butter a baking pan 10 x 6 and sprinkle it with 1/4 c. bread crumbs. Put the batter into the pan, and put the cherries over the top.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake the cake for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar.
Just cut it and put it on a plate, and eat. It is more than delicious, it is perfect. It is a cake.
That's all I'll say about that cake today. Mama used to say to me, "You just want to have your cake and eat it too!" I'd say, "You have to HAVE it before you can eat it!" To me it made more sense if one were pointing out nonsense, to say, "You just want to eat your cake and have it too!!" That would be more difficult, Mama, wouldn't it? YAZZYBEL
Good morning. (Written Saturday, Feb. 18)
This has been a two day hiatus with very little news from my kids or my sisters. It's rare that this happens, that so few are writing more than a line or so in a day.
But this quiet period has followed a scene of rarest activity. I have had communication with Home of the past--the life of my mother.
Three days after my mother's birthday I decided to follow up on an old nagging curiosity. It happened like this.
My husband went to school with a guy in Tulsa who happened to have the name of the old high school sweetheart of my mother. I had always wanted Theo to ask him: Was his father so and so, from Waco Texas? But Theo, super conservative in social situations, would never ask.
Last week this man called Theo to reminisce and to tell him of the high school reunion that's going to take place...Theo told me he had no intention of going, but after a few days when no reunion packet had arrived he said sadly that he guessed they had written him off. That did it for me.
I got on the phone and dialed four one one, and found this man. When I got him on the phone, and told him who I was, and asked him about his dad--and, YES! He was the one. This man is the son of my mother's friend from oh so long ago. We had the longest, loveliest talk. My mother had told me so much about her friend's lovely mother and my new friend was pleased to hear about his own grandmother in memories from somebody else.
That's all there is to tell, really. We may not make it to the reunion, but it was a pleasure, a deep pleasure, to take that little trip to Home of the past. YAZZYBEL
Well, move over, Katy Kornettes!
Because this morning I made bacon biscuits, and my, were they good.
I made the tiny recipe of one cup self-rising flour, one-eighth cup butter, and one half cup milk. And one crispy slice of cooked thick bacon, cut into tiny cubes and stirred in at the last before baking.
This made eight normal sized biscuits, normal according to my mother. According to Col. Sanders and his ilk, it would have made about 2 biscuits. I ate two plus some of the scraps, and gave Theo two plus some of the scraps, and froze four for the future.
We may have the frozen four with frijoles, for our supper. Or we may keep them for a surprise treat on some boring night when we just need something good. I didn't make biscuits at all for years, in the interest of health. And had never actually made bacon biscuits at all. I just decided to make them yesterday when I was reading Duchess Fergie's diet book written for Weight Watchers.
Wait a minute, sez I--if Fergie gets bacon biscuits, why don't I? Of course the rule is you just get one per meal, and I ate two plus scraps. (The scraps are the best part once they are baked nice and brown.) But life is too short never to have a bacon biscuit if you should want one, and I thought I'd like to try one today.
So after church, I came home and made bacon biscuits. Theo doctored up with his extra insulin, and he got his fair share. Self-rising flour is something I've never used before but I bought a pkg of it lately, so got the recipe off the web and made them.
Church was good today. I love the old rituals. I love seeing the old faces and the new. Sermon was good, as always when Dean Richardson preaches. In fact, it is almost always good anyway. Secret is, to listen. Then you hear something you had not thought about before.
So, old church and new biscuits. Makes for a beautiful, though with a foreboding dark sky and cold wind, Sunday. YAZZYBEL
The cry rises from my hordes of readers.
"Whatever happened to Kitty Blanko?" they cry. (In my dreams.)
For Kitty Blanko, that large and gawky young cat who figured largely in these posts in the latter part of 2011, has disappeared from Fairway Court, as far as I can tell. I believe he was gone by the time of Miranda's visit, for I think Miranda never saw him.
Of course, I have been awfully busy--otherwise I might well have been down to the corner whence I believe he came, to inquire. But it's a corner of rentals, with strange young people from the Navy and otherwhere. Kitty Blanko seemed to call that his home. Lots of them moved out recently. In the best scenario, I like to believe that someone loved Kitty B. well enough to take him along with them and that he's getting along fine somewhere with a family. I hope.
I think about domestic animals a lot. Watching "Animal Cops: (city)" has made us all aware of how many animals there are out there who need care and feeding. And they aren't all little balls of fur. You grow up fast if you're on your own. You get mean. You get selfish to the core. You get hard. It's rather amazing that these semi-feral animals, once they've been introduced to captivity, settle down at all into the docile and affectionate animals that we know. Some of them never do, like Lily, KB's predecessor. Lily started out a house pet, but got captured by the wife of a neighbor and put into a cage, and cared for, and then released when those people moved away. Lily never returned to her domesticized ways. She got wilder and wilder. She came around to eat (who wouldn't?) but she was her own man. She lived in a hole in the lower forty under some long grass. And it wasn't easy. She lost an eye too. Then, she too, disappeared...was simply never seen again. Was she run over on the other street? Captured by a civic group running down feral cats? We will never know. She like Kitty Blanko lived her own mysterious and private life. Our paths crossed for a time, and then it was all over...guess life's like that. YAZZYBEL
The best thing about eating at a restaurant is that you get courses, should you so choose.
Someone comes and takes your plate away after you finish your salad. And they come back in a moment and give you something else.
I like that. If I won the lotto, aside from getting a larger house to accomodate all my stuff, I'd spend all my money on a good house-servant or two. Someone who knew how to put it down and take it away. Even if I did the cooking myself.
However, the restaurant poses another crucial choice. We can choose three courses (or more of course) and have Appetizer, Main Course, and Dessert. But our old tummies can't accomodate that much food any more and we have to choose two. That leaves one with a main course with either an appetizer to precede, or a dessert to follow.
I guess it'd be the mood one's in, mainly, that decides the procedure. Usually nowadays I skip the dessert (as they are usually manufactured in a warehouse far away and kept in the refrigerator till needed, sometimes much later indeed.)
But there are niceties to be observed with choosing my usual, the Appetizer and the Main Course. They should be as far different as possible in manner of preparation. I had the clam and mussels in wine broth, and then the veal scallopini with vegetables. Who knew that both dishes would include tomatoes diced finely, in a mixture of tomato-onion-garlic-herbs? I should have asked. I should have thought. But I didn't.
A better choice would have been the salmon and spinach presentation, perhaps. Probably no tomatoes there. But my sensibilities have been warned off sickly US cultivated salmon, and there was no adventence to the contrary. The chicken was another herb/chicken dish. The steak? It had a tomato sauce...
It's a distinction like that one I was talking about before: No Garlic in the Enchiladas. Our cuisine should be fairly rigid, so that one would know pretty exactly what one was getting upon ordering a dish. There should not be a more than 70% inclusion of tomatoes in the main courses for sure, as all the rest of the things on the menu (pizzas, pasti, and all those appetizers) seemed to have tomatoes too...Come to think of it, that is the major flaw I found in the restaurant, Trattoria Italianissimo (other than the name), in downtown Chula Vista. Otherwise it is a pleasant place with real waiters (with ties on) and white tablecloths and nice cutlery and real people cooking in the kitchen. I got a glass of yummy Pinot Grigio for eight dollars to go with my clams and mussels. Their menu was more ambitious when they opened up...but times are hard, restaurant-goers expectant of chain-store practices, tastes ignorant in the long run...so they have become more accessible. I guess that means tomatoes and lots of them. Maybe I should suggest risi-e-bisi (spelling looks wrong) or some of the other simple but beguiling dishes in the Italian cucina. YAZZYBEL
Yesterday was my mama's birthday. She was born on February 11, 1904, in El Paso, Texas. She was born in that exotic locale because her older brother had terrible bronchitis and the whole family had been removed from Central Texas out to where the air was pure and fresh, 'el aire mas transparente,' until he recuperated. (He did.)
My mother was born with the gift (or curse) of great beauty. I have never known another person more beautiful than she, nor known the impact of universal admiration more fully upon an unsuspecting girl. Most of us, when we are young, have enough of beauty to have to learn to temper our own reactions in the face of admiration,
covetousness, jealousy, hatred. But those who have so much--it's often forgotten that they are human and have in themselves the yearnings and desires of ordinary mortals. Their expectations, unmet, must have a bigger impact on the holders of them, no?
Yesterday among us sisters, the reflections dwelt mostly on her wonderful gifts of taste, culinary art, organization, spirit, humor, and courage. Nobody mentioned the form, the skin, the hair, the eyes, the smile---because we simply saw her as "Mama." But she was beautiful in all those parts and remained so until her extreme old age. Unbelieveable.
Her beauty did not bring her happiness. Her happiness, as it was, came from the qualities I mentioned above. She was admirable. She had coped with life using all the qualities at her behest, and she did a marvelous job down there in the heat and dust of South Texas, creating civilization with her fellow women, and passing it down to all of us as best she could. But, my, she was beautiful. YAZZYBEL
You'll notice I didn't say, "To stop cooking."
"Give up" means that there's a sacrifice. And there is, if I am not cooking.
It is nice and in fact wonderful that one can buy an edible meal, delivered to one's home. I am totally in favor of the enterprise.
And some of the food is not that bad. It reminds me of the worst of hospital food in the old days. Watery vegetables, mystery meats. But it has been prepared with some thought, and you can see that a week's menus have been thought out pretty thoroughly. If you have not had something in a few days, it's pretty certain that it's coming up soon. Beets come about every ten days in some form or another. I guess if you do not care for beets, that is once too often, but I love beets, even Harvard Beets a la Fannie Farmer, beloved of dormitory cooks in my college days. Green beans, peas, corn, and carrots appear very frequently as I guess they are the most acceptable vegetables out there. So far, there have been no artichokes, or asparagus. There are no soups so therefore no butternut squash bisque...It is a dull, but acceptable diet if you have no better.
I'd rather have the crumbs from my sisters' tables than eat the Meals on Wheels. There. It's the truth. We are gals that can COOK. Some stopped at the Good Housekeeping Cookbook. Some at the Martha Stewart. But the food is all GOOD GOOD GOOD. If they had to throw it into the back of a car and cart it around the countryside, would it still be delicious? YES. It might get cold, but it could be warmed up and still be better than the MOW. Sorry, but it's true.
Down in Brownsville, the ladies of the Presbyterian Church used to make a MOW kind of lunch and take it around to subscribers for a quarter per lunch. Twenty five cents, people. All volunteer, That was in 1990. I hope they still do it. There are people in serious permanent need, and people in temporary straits, who are so grateful for such service.
At college, the dorm food we used to get was pretty bad. At Southwestern U. in Georgetown, TX, where I suffered terribly through my freshman year, the dorm food was almost inedible. I had never had to undergo cafeteria service before, and I'll never forget the ghastly smells, damp trays, watery everything, that made our meals so bad. No convict in the USA should ever have to eat the Sunday night suppers we were offered, Sunday being clean-out night in the refrigerators. And we had to eat it or starve; the University was far from the small downtown, and there were no eateries anywhere in the vicinity, even if I 'd had the gumption to search one out. I remember the pale harrassed pimply kids on the "line", offering out hard-boiled eggs at breakfast time...Hard boiled eggs for breakfast! The very thought made me gag. And I wasn't a fancy eater; I was just used to the best of the best of Temple Tradition cookery PLUS (the advantage of living on the border) the best Mexican cookery there is. I didn't know what horrible stuff was served out at places like my dorm.
The next year, I went up to Baylor, at Waco, and lived at Memorial. They had a much more civilized system of meals there. Breakfast was still rather unappetizing, but dinner was mannerly. We had to sit at tables of eight. Whoever got the last seat on the end was "Mama," and presided over the table. That means she could pick the person to say Grace, and appoint all service and order necessary. We had students to serve the food, and I must say it was not too bad. I suffered over Grace; if I'd had a brain I'd have memorized a short Grace and used it over and over, but I never thought of it...and was always wracked with shyness and a tied tongue when I was fixed with that gimlet eye of Mama.
Anyway, the food was somewhat better. Quite a bit better, though nowhere comparable to my mother's. We got desserts, sometimes yummy ones. I remember a confection called "Radio Bars", which were a chocolate base kind of like a brownie, topped with a stiff marshmallow goo which strung out unbreakingly as you raised your bite to your mouth. Radio Bars were delicious. Much appreciated. And there was a crumb, apple and walnut concoction which unfailingly caused someone at the table to wittily remark that somebody must have paid their tuition in walnuts, because it appeared quite often.
Across the street from my dorm was a tiny crowded cafe called, I think, the College Inn. Those people made the best burgers. And everything they made was good. Their prices were cheap, and I ate many a meal there regardless of the hard-earned money my parents had laid out for my board at the dorm. I wish I had one of their burgers right NOW. And at breakfast they served huge incomparable sweet rolls with cheese melted over the top. I had never eaten anything like them, and I just loved them.
So--am I committed to cooking for myself every meal every day from now on? I guess not--still taking MOW...but if I could, I'd choose to get my meals from the College Inn,...with now and then, a Radio Bar for dessert. YAZZYBEL
That author's name, the one who wrote, Mi hermano el alcalde, is Fernando Vallejo. I could not think of it, and by the time I had gone to Amazon to find it, it was too late to go back to HTML and put it in. I mean no disrespect to Sr Vallejo. He is a hot item in the Latin book scene, I guess. I want to read the book, but reading is so slow for me now with my poor eyes--that reading in Spanish is just untenable. I'll wait till I see it come out in English. YAZZYBEL
I was just reading a piece on Aol's home page about letting your hairdresser know when it's over:
how so many women feel guilty when they leave one hairdresser for another.
I know but too well what they mean. I had the perfect hairdresser. My hair could have literally gone for weeks after one of his wash and dries. (I won't use the B word.)
But, he was a careless fellow in the area of human relations. I always called ahead and let him pick the time of the appointment, just so it would be convenient for him and he could give me the time and attention a client deserves. But time after time, I found myself squeezed into a few niches of time between stages of a color job, or multiple color jobs. I know how important hair-coloring is to a beautician. It's a hundred-and-fifty-dollar appointment as opposed to a thirty dollar one. But it's my opinion that if he takes my thirty dollar wash and dry, he owes me all the courtesy and attention at his disposal during the forty or so minutes it takes him to get the job done.
It just wasn't happening. So I just slithered away. Even though he and I were friends (with a shared love of literature and plenty to talk about that was meaningful to both of us), I just slithered away. I slithered away just before Christmas of last year--or has it been two years? Time goes by. I slithered by with an unpresented packet of toddler books in espanol for his baby to listen to. "Buenas noches, Luna," --and more.
Those books remained in a chest in my living room, bothering me a lot in the meantime every time I opened the chest and saw them. They haunted me even though baby is now only two and ready to appreciate "Buenas noches, Luna." What to do?
Then in January I read on a Spanish website a story about some lady big shot in Mexico, and it mentioned that she liked to read. What are you reading now? is the question everyone likes to ask now. What she was reading was Mi hermano, el alcalde, (My Brother, the Mayor) by whoever.
I remembered my friend/hairdresser, and ordered out the book from Amazon. (It wasn't available in English.) And one fine morning I ran into his shop and gave him the book. He was astounded to see me.
A week or so later, I found the kiddy books in my living room. So I ran in with those...we had a hasty joyous reunion (as his hair client sat in the chair, impatient I am sure) and he said, "Pero, Linda--que te paso? Por que no has regresado?" and I gave him a hasty and only semi-lying answer about convenience, location, my husband's poor health..and off I ran again.
Now, I find myself a bit dissatisfied with my hair at the new place. It doesn't look as good as it might, often...and there are times when I long for my old "perfect" hair. And it was perfect. Good as he is, my new guy never has achieved perfect. What to do? He is so nice, tries very hard to be perfect (most of the time.) And the shop is closer, chic-er, nicer, and all the operatives are my bestest friends. All of them, mine the best of the best.
It will come down to this. Hairdressers are like men; whether male or female, they are like men in that they get bored with you. It was pretty exciting at first, and gets more interesting now and then (more and more rarely), but--it is going to settle down pretty fast (within a couple of years) to humdrum and routine.
It's up to you to decide if it's over. Will you have regrets? Likely you will. But, when it is over, girl, it is over. YAZZYBEL
'Cause I've got the shingles!!
I am sorry I have them but am glad I am (I believe) correctly diagnosed at last.
I have to take acyclovir.
I will be glad to take medicine if it will take away the vexing dizziness and vertigo I've been experiencing for the last few weeks.
I also have to take nose spray and so forth, but I do believe the doctor hit on the right thing. He had his medical student in there asking me a million questions before he came in, and I blabbed away. The med student asked, "Is there any other ailment or complaint or condition you have?" "No...," I said doubtfully, though I couldn't think of anything.
Dr Rickwa came in and looked at an itchy rash on the back of my neck, and asked me a few questions, and I asked him if it could be ringworm (always ready to blame the cat.) And he said, "No, if you'd ever had shingles I'd say it was shingles." AND BINGO, and SHAZAM, the light came on and I knew that is what it is. Exhaustion, dizziness, miserableness, neckache...that is what I had before when I had shingles...So now I will take the medicine and lie about as much as possible for the rest of the week. Hurray. Glad I changed the sheets yesterday evening; it makes lying around so much more comfortable. And, by the bye, thanks a lot, JD Salinger, for a catchy title. YAZZYBEL
Today we got up and after many domestic mishaps such as my spilling bacon grease on the kitchen floor (a real disaster, believe me, since Theo tried to blot it up with plastic bags and spread it all over, and it was a lot.)
So after we got it together (!) we decided to get out in the car on this beautiful day, to cheer ourselves up a bit. So we went to the Ninety-nine-Cents-Only store in National City, where there are wonderful things to be had if you just look a bit.
Now that we have left there, I just remembered ads for wonderful European Easter chocolates that they are selling. Did not think to look for them...Too bad; too late now.
Anyway we got a ton of wonderful produce and a few cans of no-salt tomatoes and beans, and a number of plastic items and some dishwashing soap. Total was twenty six dollars and something. Unbelieveable. Alas, when we got home we discovered that the soap had come open and gone all over a lot of the produce...lots more washing at home. And we are worried about the blueberries.
After we left the store, we came down to the J St. Marina in Chula Vista, where we looked at the many ducks of all ilks that were swarming around in the park, and the huge huge seagulls that were in the area where the slough comes out. Seagulls and ducks just seem to be getting bigger and bigger.Or I am getting paranoid.
Then we came home and ate a giant potato that had been baking the whole time we were gone and still had to be microwaved the full time (we ate one fourth of the potato each, folks)...plus three and a half each of some small green zucchinis that we bought at the Fresh and Easy last night....plus some pan broiled t-bone steak that was riddled with difficult tough connective tissue here and there in a most un-luxury- meat way from Ralphs...and are now resting to digest our feast, and to ponder our adventures. YAZZYBEL
A pilon is something unexpected that you get when you buy something.
A little surprise.
Here is my little surprise. I am putting it in today because I am unable to get it put in as the lead photo on my blog. How dumb am I. Really. It's embarrassing.
So, again, moi, in a photo more recent, more accurate, and preferable to me to the one that is smiling in the apron up there untopple-able at the head of the blog. YAZZYBEL
Yesterday I had to go to the doctor with Theodore. He is a nice young man. The age gap between us is striking. His mom died a few years ago as did his dad, and they were in their seventies.
Going to the doctor is vexatious. The office is bound to be loaded with germs and other filth. There's no escaping it. Then, there is the trip down there, the interruption of any continuity in our lives as we drop everything and run to some doctor.
Everyone, eat well. Eat little, mostly vegetables.
It's the only way we are going to save ourselves from a lifetime of sitting in those doctors' chairs waiting for our number to come up.
WebMed came up with suggestions today for food choices. Instead of:
potato chips, choose air-popped popcorn
granola, choose bran flakes
sugar drink choose fruit juice
cheese dip choose hummus
ice cream choose sherbet and ice
sausage pizza choose margherita or veggie
alfredo sauce choose marinara
frozen fried food choose frozen dishes with
rice or veggies
fried fish or chicken choose boiled shrimp
Those are all good ideas; we all know them all...we have to be careful of fat meat, cream, cheese. Too much of those will do us in. In the case of Theo and I, we don't go overboard except for Theo and cheese. But it is our incidental carb intake that's bringing us down, I think. Beware of cookies, crackers, donuts, sweet rolls, and boxed cookies especially. Even, beware of store bread. I may have to go back to Katy Kornettes as a life-saver alternative. Oh, boy! YUM. YAZZYBEL
Yes, I do love parsley. Flat, curly, Italian, or good old USA, I love parsley.
I can remember when I was about four years old, watching our rabbit (probably a leftover Easter Bunny) eat his parsley. He ate it so daintily, yet so voraciously, nibbling and savoring every bite. I remember trying to mimic his technique, eating and wrinkling his little nose. I could not do it...but I loved the parsley anyway.
When we ate out, for years, there was parsley on every plate as garnish. I have always eaten my parsley, and that of any other diner who'd give me theirs. I do love it, and it is FREE. Ditto the orange slice, but that's another posting.
Nowadays, our thrifty restaurants put Kale on the plate in place of parsley. They try to pretend that it's because of nutrition, but I know it is cost. Nevertheless, I also eat the bits of frilly Kale. (It's free too.)
The only thing really bad about the MOW is that there is no fresh leaf of kale, nor spinach, nor chard, nor even lowly collard, as yet. Too bad. There is so much you can do with them, those leaves. Cut them up into small shards, and put them into almost any stir-up dish. You can just taste the goodness. I mean the nutritional value.
I am feeling more myself today. Had you noticed? It just goes to show that a kind, cheerful doctor can do a lot to cheer up a lonely old lady. He even got me to try the Lipitor. And it's free. We have to pay for the doctor, but the kindliness and cheerfulness are like the parsley on the plate! YAZZYBEL
Hi, I felt a bit better yesterday, worse today.
Woke up feeling vertigo'ed, finally called the doctor's office and got in to see Dr Bautista after lunch. He was good. Good=makes me feel a bit better.
I'd like to have more energy. I need a tonic. Will look on the web for a recipe. YAZZYBEL
